A typical recessed lighting fixture includes a frame, a reflector, a junction box and structure for attaching the frame to the ceiling. The frame includes an opening through which the reflector is employed to direct light to an area below the lighting fixture. In particular, a wall-wash reflector is employed to direct the light down at an angle away from the lighting fixture to illuminate a section of a wall. If a conventional downlight is placed near a wall, an arch results having light below and darkness above (as illustrated in FIG. 1). When several luminaires are placed at intervals along a wall, the end result is a series of these arches along the length of the wall being illuminated. The goal of a wall washer luminaire is to obtain a more even illumination on the wall, eliminating these arches and creating a more uniform wall appearance.
There are generally two prior art approaches to wall lighting from a ceiling mounting lighting fixture 210. The first is typically referred to as a lensed wall washer. This uses an angled lens 220 to diffuse the light as depicted in FIG. 2a. The advantage of this approach is that it provides good light coverage of the wall. However, it has several disadvantages:    1. The lens 220 is very bright, producing an amount of glare within the room that some people find objectionable.    2. As illustrated in FIG. 2b, the lighting fixture 210 has a different appearance than other recessed lights in the room. Designers prefer the wall washer fixtures near the walls to look similar to other downlights in the room.    3. The thickness of the cone cut on one end (item 230) typically results in a dark area at the top of the wall (approximately 2 inches below the plane 240 of the ceiling).
The second approach to wall washing is typically referred to as an “open wall washer.” That is, it is open in the sense that there is no lens close to the ceiling aperture 310. As illustrated in FIG. 3a, such an open wall washer usually consists of two parts: (1) a downlight cone 320 that gives the same appearance when viewed from the room side, as a simple downlight not having a wall washing function; and (2) a “kick reflector” 330 that bulges out the side and “kicks” the light higher up the wall so that the wall illuminance is more uniform than a simple downlight. The advantage of this second approach is that it looks more like a simple downlight from the room side when people are looking at it. However, it also has the disadvantage that the kick reflector bulge makes it more difficult to fit in a frame or housing. This is especially problematic with a double wall wash (for lighting the two walls of a hallway simultaneously with one luminaire) and a corner wall wash (for the corner of a room).